LAST WEEK’S SNOWFALL AND FROST.
HEAVY TOLL 0N LOCAL GARDENS. Dunedin and its suburbs are, fortunately, very rarely subjected to such weather conditions as they had to endure last week. The result of the heavy snowfall and the severe frost and high winds which prevailed for a few days was a most pitiful appearance of nearly all garden plants. Even those of a robust type were wilted and had their growth thrown back for weeks. In one suburban garden visited by the writer—and it was typical of many others in the city and suburbs —the leaves and tender shoots of nearly all the plants were blasted beyond hope of recovery. Antirrhinums, pentstemons, calceolarias, and other subjects that■' would have made the garden a picture in a few weeks’ time, were a saddening sight to a plant lover. But the surprising feature about the devastation was the effect the frost and the biting wind had on some of the hardiest plants in the garden. I have, for instance, never seen such hardy plants as some of our best-known veronicas any the worse for the lowest degree of frost that is usually experienced in Dunedin in mid-winter — say. 22deg Fah. Last week, with a minimum temperature of 22deg in the garden I write ot, many large veronicas were badly withered. Another nativi plant—a handsome, well-grown specimen of clianthus puniceus. covered with flower racemes—waj a sorry spectacle. A bed of promising'fuchsias, which last year was a picture, was badly frostbitten, with little likelihood of recovering until late in the season. Cinerarias, too. v hieh had survived the winter and kept the garden gay, had received a bad dstEg, and the young seedlings, every-
where in evidence, and promising well for early blooming, are now subjects for pitiful commiseration. In the midst of this dejection, there was fortunately, another aide to the picture. The fresh beauty of the spring flowers redeemed to some extent the sadness induced by so severe a destruction of many favourite plants. Narcissi, primroses, cowslips, violets, viola gracilis, and grape hyacinths reared their heads in delightful vigour, and a charming little group of dog’s tooth violets was especially attractive. Snowdrops, winter aconites, hellebore, and other purely winter subjects were, of course, a thing of the past until next year. In the immediate future the already opening flowers of japonica and clematis inclivisa augur well for a fine display, and meantime the kowhai is in full bloom in some gardens, and the yellow blossoms ot Forsythia have succeeded the yellow jasmine on walla and' wire netting; so that, after all, our surcharged feelings at the havoc played last week will quickly give place to' the soothing and brightening influence of flower borders and shrubberies resplendent in their colourfql glories.
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Otago Daily Times, Issue 19904, 25 September 1926, Page 3
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458LAST WEEK’S SNOWFALL AND FROST. Otago Daily Times, Issue 19904, 25 September 1926, Page 3
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